She Reads Me Like a Book
by daisy-chains-and-bow-ties
Summary: Post-NOTD. One-shot. Whouffle. There's something wrong with the Doctor, and it isn't timey-wimey-spacey-wacey this time. His hearts are breaking, because everyone knows that everyone dies, and no one knows it like the Doctor. But he must never believe that.


Clara was perched atop the railing and the Doctor slapped the Tardis lightly as it tried to run an algorithm for the most painful way to knock her off. Her eyes flicked back and forth across the pages of a book. It was The Great Gatsby. The Doctor remembered sitting in a café watching as Fitzgerald scribbled on a napkin, his coffee sitting forgotten at his elbow.

Clara's hair fell across her face as she read intently, holding the book open with two hands, like a child. _They're all so young_, the Doctor mused as he ran a cloth over the console, trying to shift the layer of pan-dimensional dust from the controls, _So much younger than I am_. He was an old man, really, stuck in a gangly body, praying each time he flashed a smile that it wouldn't crack, his delicate porcelain mask.

"You look like you're worrying," Clara observed. The Doctor started and turned his head to face her, unable to muster delight. Her clever eyes shone with knowledge of him. It would take him a long time to grow accustomed to the fact that she knew him almost as well as he knew himself.

There wasn't much point trying to lie. Of late she'd been able to see right through him, almost wearily, like he was painting she was tired of staring at. That scared him. His companions stuck around for the adventure, in the beginning, and then because his life was the only life they could imagine living, and then, well, they would leave, or die, or get torn away from him. But Clara knew him. To her, he wasn't some vast incalculable mystery. She'd seen every side of him.

And yet she'd stayed. She should have been bored, or scared, but she looked at him like he was the greatest person she'd ever set eyes on. She stuck around, even more so now than before.

That was terrifying.

"I'm always worrying," he said, turning to look at the glowing console, his hands finding familiar holds. One tug would take them...anywhere. Anywhere at all in the wide, mad universe. Clara placed her hand over his and he flushed hot and cold.

"A problem shared is a problem halved," she recited, then wrinkled her nose, "I can't believe I just clichéd at you."

He waved his free hand and Clara had to duck to avoid it. She prodded him in the stomach reproachfully, "Oi, try and keep those hands under control."

The Doctor nodded distractedly. Clara waved her hand in front of his eyes, and they flickered a little before turning back with a melancholy, languid swish, to the console. He shivered almost imperceptibly.

Clara frowned, "You're really not okay, are you?"

The Doctor shook his head.

Clara plucked his hand from the zig-zag plotter and held it in hers, tracing the scars he'd accumulated through his time in that gangly body. She reached down and kissed his palm, "Tell me what's wrong," she ordered, fixing him with her stern teacher face.

He flashed a smile then, remembering that day last week they'd spent huddled in the Tardis library with blankets and flasks of tea making out class plans. He'd told her about that time he was a physics teacher in a secondary school and how the chips made the children clever enough to unravel the formula to the universe. When that became tediously boring they popped off to 1960s Paris and bought ice-creams while chasing one another around the arc de triomphe. The Tardis conjured some clunky radiators when they'd arrived dripping out of a surprisingly Baltic shower which turned the chilly streets into an icy maze.

"Nothing," he said.

"Don't lie to me," he could see one of Clara's angry punchy moods coming on, so he held up his hands and grabbed her shoulders, pulling her close against his chest.

"I mean it," he said, "You made it better."

"I didn't do anything," she protested, attempting to squirm out of his crushing grip.

He let her go and turned to the Tardis. She stood watching him curiously, "oh", she said eventually.

He twisted several cogs and wiped the last speck of dust off the controls panel, grinning down at the mass of buttons, his eyes suddenly dancing, alive. Clara stood beside him hooked her arm around his, and they stood for a moment as the Tardis whorled and dematerialised.

"Where to?" Clara whispered.

The Doctor looked down at her, grinning wide like the madman she knew he was, "Everywhere," he said, and they laughed as the Tardis jolted through space and time, throwing them around more aggressively than was strictly necessary.

The Great Gatsby flew down the corridor leading off the console room and Clara watched it go, wondering how in the world she'd managed to actually find a machine that could open up the doors to the universe wider than the pages of a book.

The Doctor waved at her as he slapped buttons and wrestled with levers. She remembered that the greater mystery was how she'd managed to find a man she loved more than the familiar folds and creases of her books.

**Hehe, I finally wrote some proper Whouffle! Give me a review if you liked it, and merry whouffle!**


End file.
